This year's 270th anniversary of the Catherine Palace is celebrated with Tsarskoe Selo Menu, a project of our museum and the Drevå restaurant.
Available from 10 October*, this special tasting menu is inspired by dishes once served to Tsarskoe Selo's imperial owners, their guests and courtiers.
The Tsarskoe Selo Menu set consists of nine courses, specially designed to take guests on a culinary journey through the history of the former imperial residence:
1. Borodino bread edible spoon with sturgeon caviar (What a promising prelude!)
2. Tsar's ukha (fish soup) made with champagne, featuring sterlet mousse and a rasstegai pie with chum salmon caviar
3. Сrayfish aspic with citrus and rose essence
4. Vegetable Still-Life on the Plate
5. Tender boiled beef with a pickled cucumber
6. Poularde à la Souvaroff with truffles and wild mushrooms
7. Kulebyaka (layered pie) with pheasant
8. Foie gras
9. Ananas (pineapple) à la Oriental, an interpretation of a spectacular dessert from one of Tsar Nicholas II's coronation banquets in 1896 and an homage to the 19th-century fashion for gastronomic illusions (What an impressive finale!)
Each course is accompanied by a story shedding light on the tastes and everyday habits of Russian emperors and empresses, as well as how Russian ukha (fish soup) met French champagne, how pineapples and strawberries grew in the Greenhouses of Tsarskoe Selo in the dead of the Russian winter, and how Russian and French culinary cultures intertwined in the 19th century. The chefs of the fine-dining establishment based their artfully prepared dishes upon their research of coronation banquet menus and other historical sources.
The Tsarskoe Selo Menu set comes with a free pass to Catherine Palace Tour 3, which includes the Palace Chapel and the Private Rooms of Grand Duke Paul Petrovich, later Emperor Paul I. The consecration of the Palace Chapel in 1756 marked the completion of the Catherine Palace and therefore its 270 anniversary in 2026.
* The Tsarskoe Selo Menu set is available on scheduled dates at the Drevå restaurant located approximately 21.5 km northwest of Tsarskoe Selo, directly on the way between St Petersburg and the southern palace suburbs like Pushkin and Pavlovsk.
